Chapter 19

Farrell approaches The House with a sense of the askew. Bruton doesn’t want anyone to know about the volcano, yet he sees nothing wrong in using Francis Hume’s funeral parlor as a place from where she could gather information without fear that Tom’s superiors are tapping the wires. “Francis has a phone, and he has a fax, but greater than all these, he has respect. He won’t look, and he won’t hang over your shoulder to see what you’re doing. Tell him it’s for Fair Mantle Village publicity. I’ll pay him for use of the machine. In advance.”

Farrell can’t call Effen to ask if she can use the equipment. She’s got to go to him.
She tells him that Bruton’s fax at home is on the blink, and she can’t use the one at his practice because it’s too busy with matters more important than publicity.
She doesn’t like lying to Effen. Not because he might sense she’s not truthful. Because he doesn’t deserve to be deceived.

The Owner appears to not notice the forced crispness of her tone, the stiffness of her smile. He’s delighted to help her but expresses regret that she’ll have to wait for the fax machine. Gustie’s sending notices to the papers. He lets Farrell wait in the second floor study, in the company of tea and cookies and the CD player. Taxidermed birds and a taxidermed raccoon on a small log look down from walls covered in William Morris wallpaper.

From the study, Farrell has a nice view of the street. The snowplows have done their duty. All around, people are shoveling out in teams, piling snow into shoulder-high walls. Some people walk in the road, which is a carpet of packed snow. A man Farrell doesn’t recognize pushes a snowblower into The House’s driveway, which Matt and Ben had given up shoveling. As the snowblower goes into action, she notices action of a different sort: Matt and Ben are building a snowman. On the mortuary’s lawn.

She finds Effen in his office. “Do you know where Matt and Ben are?”

“Matt and Ben?” The question strike Farrell as being propelled by another, unspoken question: What does she want with Matt and Ben? The speaker, however, seems to have grasped her desire to share a joke. “They’re out to lunch. Why?”

“They’re out to lunch, all right.” She leads him to the front door.

Effen’s reaction to the act of artistry reminds Farrell of a scared cat leaping up on all fours, back arched, fur standing on end. He recovers, appeals to Farrell. “You’re in boots. Will you please tell them to dismantle it? I don’t want to yell and call attention to what they’re doing. OhdearGod, here comes Harvey …”

The postman stomps up the steps without holding on to the railing, pendulous bag swaying on his back. He gives Effen a few envelopes and junk mail. “Hey, France, who’s your customer?”

Effen is all innocence. “My customer?”

“Yeah, the guy over there.” Harvey flaps his elbow toward the snowman. “Ha ha, I heard you keep people on ice, but this beats everything.”

The middle-age Gorman sisters from down the street shuffle by, clinging to each other and clutching white wax bags that suggest they’ve been to the bakery. They look up long enough to see what Harvey is bellowing about, and smile as if seeing Our Lord.

Farrell follows Harvey down the steps and relays Effen’s message to the sculptors.
Matt and Ben can’t merely knock the thing over. They remove the sticks that are the arms and the stones that comprise the eyes, nose and mouth and reverently deposit each piece beneath the rhododendrons.

Effen and Farrell watch the dissection from the window in the main parlor. Farrell’s seen EMTs make less fuss over human body parts. “Are they taking the thing down or interring it? Get a priest, why don’t you, so they can give it a proper burial.”
Effen is serene. “I’ve trained them well, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it’s healthy! Here, this is how they should do it.”

While Matt and Ben continue to fawn over the facial features, Farrell knocks off the head and the midsection, and stomps both into much. The destruction is swift. “This is how I break bones,” she explains in biblical tones.

Matt whistles low. Ben claws out clumps of the remaining section, the base, like a backhoe picking away the ground at a construction site.

Back inside, Farrell lets out an “Oof!” of breathlessness and blows on her hands to warm them. Her chest heaves. Her face it hot pink.

Effen gives her a steaming cup of tea. “Here you go, Giant Killer.”

“Don’t sell me short, F.N.,” she says. “That really is how you bust bones. I wasn’t using only my foot or even my leg. I was putting everything I’ve got into it, beginning from here.” She taps her forehead. “I know how to fight the right way.”

“I didn’t know there was a wrong way.”

“Slugging it out is the wrong way. There’s no strategy. You open yourself to getting the stuffing beat out of you.”

“What is the right way?”

“You go for the sensitive spots. Non, not that one,” Farrell adds as Effen winces. “Eyes, ears, throat, nose . You can do more damage yanking on someone’s ears than punching them in the gut. You get a hold of the ear at the base and pull forward.” She reaches through Effen’s hair. The demonstration is nothing compared to the real thing. Still, it brings tears to Effen’s eyes. He gasps, grabs the offended part.

“Then there’s the use of objects. I can take something as harmless as a saucer and turn it into a lethal weapon just by doing this…” She gently pushes the rim of the saucer into his throat above the collar. “Or a spoon on the bridge of the nose …”

Effen holds up his hand before the domestic utensil reaches its destination. “I get the picture.”

“It’s edges. Edges will save you. And it’s good, too, if you can hit two spots at one time. Edges at one end, a stomp on a foot or a blow to the wincer at the other.”

“A blow to what?”

“The wincer. You know, The needless-to-describe.”

“Ah. Of course.”

Effen pours more tea for her. He doesn’t seem offended, but he’s silent. Farrell has no idea why she let such high spirits run away with her. He must think she’s emotionally defective, if not immature. She clears her throat, sits calmly at the desk.

She’s about to ask Effen about the stuffed animals on the wall, when he says, without any sign of disapproval, “Where in the world did you learn to do that? Did you take a self-defense course?”

“I learned it on the job. A local drug alliance sponsored a self-defense course for women only. I covered the opening session for the paper. By the end of the evening I was breaking inch-thick boards.”

“With your head?”

“With my fist! You don’t believe me.”

“I do believe you! I just can’t get over the terminology. ‘The wincer?’”

“Forget the wincer! Do you have a board I can borrow? How about one of the slats from the sleigh bed?”

“You want to see me sleeping on the floor again? All right, I take your word that you can break things. What’s the secret?”

“Conviction. It sets you up for the follow-through. The bone isn’t the end-all. Just as the ears or the eyes or the other parts aren’t the end-all. You’re always moving through the thing right in front of you.”

“What are you moving through to?”

“Freedom. You don’t necessarily want to kill the attacker. You want to incapacitate him so you can get away. Then you run like hell, preferably making all the noise you can.”

“That’s dignified.”

“It works, Eff. Or so they say.”

“Well, here’s hoping you never have to find out.” Effen raises the cup in a toast.

Matt and Ben shuffle by, heads hanging in mock contrition.

Effen shakes his own head. “Look at them. Their mothers didn’t want them once they were touched by human hands. What’s the matter, gents, sitting on your brains too long?”

“Yeah, we’ve got brain damage bad,” Matt slurs through cold lips.

Effen suggests they put their brains in order; it’s time to get back to work.



So in the end, Brut was right. Effen let Farrell work without hanging over her shoulder to see what she was doing. But not out of respect. Out of fear. For himself.
He really didn’t have to marshal everybody back to work. He had to discipline himself. He was enjoying Farrell’s visit too much. He didn’t know she could be so physical, in space as well as language. And he didn’t know he could be so open to suggestion. When he proposed seeing if Gustie had left enough paper in the fax machine, he all but pulled the cup and saucer from Farrell’s hand, then briskly headed for the office, plate still in fist. The fax was indeed ready for more abuse.
While Farrell busies herself in the office, Effen does the dishes and tidies up the kitchen.

Suddenly Farrell is calling out thanks and good-bye. She’s leaving quickly, showing herself to the door. He catches up with her on the porch. “That was fast.”

“The answers came in right away.”

Effen takes her arm, tells her to be careful on the ice.

She wraps her hand around the railing. Effen still has her arm. “Your flutes,” he’s saying, as if he won’t have another chance for the rest of his life. “The harpsichord is tuned.”

“Sure,” Farrell says.

“Tonight?”

Farrell hesitates. “Brut and I are thrashing out tactics with Tom.”

“Tomorrow?”

“There’s a fund-raising meeting at the village.”

“Friday?”

Farrell nods.

“Six?”
Farrell stares.

“I make a mean roaster.”

“Oh. Okay.”

That’s all there is to it. Farrell goes her way; Effen goes inside. He feels as if a weight’s been lifted from him, though he doesn’t know why he would have it or where it came from. He irritates Matt and Ben by whistling along with Das Lied von der Erde, which Matt usually plays whenever he’s in a particularly sober mood.

Farrell, meanwhile, hardly feels the cold as she walks back to Bruton’s. She wonders what kind of an accompanist Effen is. She wonders, too, what it will be like, the two of them alone together for the first time. Why would he want to get her alone? She remembers the look on his face and the feel of his hand as he kept her on the stairs.

She stops herself from imagining more. She’s happy with the notion of dinner and practice. Dinner and practice are more than she ever hoped for.

But why would she hope for anything from Francis Hume to begin with?

She doesn’t know how she’ll tell Bruton she won’t be home for dinner on Friday. Bruton will want to know everything. Then Bruton will surmise the wrong thing and read too much into the date, especially after what he said about the Dracula fax. No, she mustn’t tell Bruton anything. Not yet. She’ll wait until the last minute.
On returning home, Farrell learns she won’t have to tell Bruton anything, after all. She won’t be having dinner with Effen.

The public hearing is Friday at seven.